Success.
Techsmith have now acknowledged this is a known issue. New customers should be made aware of this issue. It is a dealbreaker for many IMO.

I hope a patch & version 8.0 fixes this issue which should be a high priority.

Here was the response from the Senior Support Staff Member....

This is a known issue with pausing and sync. Our development team is aware of the issue and looking into what solutions we can implement. Currently the best workaround is to not pause and cut out any unwanted video in the timeline of Camtasia Studio.

I have not ran into or experienced this problem with the latest version of Camtasia Studio 8.4.2 as of yet. I would think that issues has been resolved. Just my experience from trying this with no side effects so I wanted to share that with everyone. Thanks for posting and have a great day.

The audio files cannot be a .mp3. It will work with a .wav. i would suggest downloading 'Audacity' and importing the audio file to it, and then exporting it to convert to a .wav. You should have no issues after that - atleast I did not.

I am still having this problem in v8.5.2 and v8.6.0. The more you use the pause/resume button the more the audio and video become desynchronized. It is incredibly frustrating. After more than 4 years of knowing about this issue and doing nothing you should not expect them to ever fix it. Clearly they don't care. I'm going to start shopping around for other tools. Buyer beware!

I've already contacted tech support about this multiple times. The latest answer is that they are aware of the issue. And that a fix is not expected to be implemented any time soon.

Also, it's irrelevant that the issue does not happen for you. The only thing that matters is that it happens, and is happening for many others, and that techsmith is aware of the problem but are not bothering to fix it for over 4 years.

I also have been having this problem for a few years. I even sent in a test video of a metronome to demonstrate how the "clicks" eventually get out of sync with the swing of the pendulum. The response I received was that the video wasn't a "good example" and I should submit a video of someone talking on camera (although subtle loss of lip sync is even moredifficult to detect). I did, however, find a correlation between the dropped frame count of the capture and degradation of audio/video sync. I disabled as many apps and services as possible and my dropped frame count went from over 100 to less than 10 in a short capture resulting in almost perfect sync. Hope that helps.

There is nothing else running on my computer when I'm recording except for a text editor - I'm a computer programmer that makes coding tutorials. I'm also recording at a measly 5 fps. Lol. I submitted a perfect .trec example file to Techsmith and simply recorded my voice saying "Click" as I made little dots in the MS paint application. I literally never have a single dropped frame. My dropped frames are always 0. Yet it still goes out of sync the more you use the pause/resume button.

After shopping around I found another screen recording application called "Action!" by Mirillis. It records in HD, has pause/resume, generates AVI/MP4 and other goodies. I recorded my desktop at 120fps with "Action!", played some games, did a bunch of other more resource intensive stuff (which I never do when recording with camtasia), and also paused/resumed the video a total of 73 times to really stress it out. The result? A perfect MP4 file with video and audio _perfectly_ in sync. And the best part? "Action!" only costs $30. Lol!

This is a very old thread, so this is more for new people just finding this thread...

There are several reasons why audio might become out of sync with video. The issue described by the original poster was the use of the pause button during recording would cause sync issues. We saw this most often when trying to record webcam, but it was only reproducible when recording large dimension web cam video. In this case, the best workaround is to reduce the dimensions of the webcam recording, or to use a camera that records straight to an MP4 file. This reduces the performance load during recording, which often helps maintain audio/video sync. If you use this approach, it may be helpful to record audio separately on both the camera and the screen, and clap at the beginning of your recording. The spike in the audio tracks can be used to sync the recordings once added to the timeline.

We did make improvements in Camtasia 9.0.0 that should help with loss of sync during recording.

If you're on the latest version, and you continue to have problems with audio/video sync, please visit https://support.techsmith.com and open a ticket for our TechSupport staff. Someone will follow up with you to assist further.

I can confirm that this issue has been resolved (for me anyway) in the new Camtasia 9. Very excited about this. I just hope it stays fixed!!
Nevermind my previous crossed-out comment. The problem still totally exists. The only difference is it just takes a little longer (few more minutes) to desync. Oh well. Btw, anyone else with this problem check out Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 - it's a _free_ screen capture tool and works perfectly. It might fit your needs as it did mine.

To be clear my issue was not webcam related at all. I dont use webcams. I was only recording my desktop at 5fps (yes just 5) and the audio video would desync within just a few minutes of recording.

This is still a known issue in Camtasia. While we did make improvements for webcam syncing in version 9, I still see a few reports of pausing with webcam cause sync issues in the recording. Right now the best workaround is to not pause and cut out any mistakes afterwards in the timeline. I know this isn't the best of news to share, hopefully it's something we can continue to improve moving forward.

Just so we're all on the same page and so that other users are aware. The desyncing occurs even withOUT using a webcam and even withOUT pausing. It's definitely machine dependent. I have 2 windows machines both running windows 7 - one machine will lose sync after a few minutes, and the other machine never loses sync even after 3.5hrs of recording. Oddly enough, the higher performance machine is the one with the desync issues.

There are multiple causes for video sync issues. I was referring just to the one with pausing. If you are having sync issues with no web cam and no pausing then submitting a ticket at support.techsmith.com would be the best way to go so we can see what about that machine could be causing the issue. We often see updating audio drivers resolve sync issues (not always) but it's something we can dig into among other things.

I recently purchased Camtasia, and I am very disappointed by this issue. The ability to pause would be a great feature, if it didn't ruin the recording! This problem has cost me hours of trying to edit the sound and video to be in sync. Very frustrating!

"just make lots of very short captures, and use those in your project; that way, the issue should not affect you"

Wow, seriously? Haha. Oh yeah, great solution. Let's see my system desyncs after a couple minutes. So for my 2-3 hour videos I'll just make a 100 or so "short captures", stopping the recording, saving the .trec, and starting recording again for the next tiny clip. Oh yeah man, that'll work, you're a genius! Especially for those people recording a live presentation with a webcam. I'm sure they won't miss a thing. Oh wait, here's my suggestion for that...just ask the speaker to stop speaking every couple of minutes and wait until you can start recording again. That way, the issue should not affect you. Yeah! That'll work! So convenient and reasonable!!

jwdonal. As kayakman stated it was just a suggestion and you should show a little more respect to others who try to offer them. When you are recording videos that are that long almost any software that records audio may go out of sync unless your system is setup with a lot of resources anyway and that then is not a guaranteed. You might want to consider getting a Digital Audio Recorder to connect your Mic to and use that for the audio of your speaker and just enable the System Sounds when using Camtasia and not use the Record the Mic as it would then be recording the audio into the Digital Audio Recorder. I have done this many times when recording a presentation and then just import the audio back into the Camtasia Editor and it syncs up fine or with very little effort. I have also used Audio Recording Software too when recording a presentation with video but it did not work out so well as the resources were just to hefty for doing a recording of 2 to 3 hours long. That is why he suggested what he kindly did. Sorry it did not work for you but if you do some research on video and audio you will find that this is just not an issue with Camtasia as other software produces the same results of audio being out of sync with video.

It may cost a little more for a Digital Audio Recorder pending on which one you choose and what your needs are but I have a few different ones that work for the purpose of what you are trying to accomplish. Other Professionals have a more expensive setup that is meant for doing long video presentations with audio for live events etc.

If my suggestion is not what you are looking for or you feel this suggestion is a joke then just disregard the suggestion and I guess you will have to do some research on your own to figure out what the software is meant to do and the limitations of any software for recording longer presentations like that and will understand.

I am not sure if this is what is causing it to appear to be out of sync or not. When I tried recording my screen with the webcam and audio enabled when I paused the recording it still shows the webcam video when in the paused mode. Not sure if it is supposed to pause the webcam also or shut it off so it does not show in the preview as I usually do those recordings for webcam separate and add it in to my Camtasia Project(s).

Not sure if this is normal for everyone or just a few or so people. This could be a bug or just the way Camtasia works. It does appear to make the audio out of sync with the webcam video but not my screen recording as the screen recording is paused but when I move or talk and it shows up on the webcam then it has the appearance of being out of sync as there is no audio on the paused section. Hope that makes sense and let me know if this is what is also happening on your end.

I think we both need to put in and other users too a Support Ticket to TechSmith and redraw their attention to this issue and see if it can get addressed so we can post what they say back here for other users to see that may have this issue also. The information for doing that is below:

I know this does not solve your issue but I wanted to add my input and let you know if someone else was experiencing the same issue. Sorry I could not be of more help and contact support and let us know what they have to say please by posting back here. I never give up on this software as it has it's flaws but is one of the best for recording your screen and and webcam on the market today in my opinion but as any software you will always find likes and dislikes that you want fied or do not agree with or like.

Thanks for posting and have a great day/night. I put in an email to get an answer on this issue and will post back what I find out.

my intention here is to add to what others, such as Dave and Fred, have offered regarding audio/video sync issues with screen captures that also involvere web cam; accordingly, this is offered in the "for what it's worth" category ...

I have always noted some lag issues whenever web cam was being captured along with the screen; the web cam clips never looked as crisp as the screen captures, and, with longer captures, there could be noticeable lag between the web cam audio and the screen captured video action

I've always suspected this was due to the screen capture and web cam capture using different software paths, resulting in slightly different timings in how the processes are handled in code. Longer captures seem to accumulate more of this offset effect

regardless, I have found that if I keep my captures involving screen and web cam short in duration [1 or 2 minutes each], the audio/video lag would be minimal, easily trimmed from the project, and usually not noticed by the viewer

Thanks kayakman and I contacted support on this issue and as Mike Spinks stated above it is a known issue/bug. Great suggestions but does not fix the issue that has been there for years though and I hope to see that get fixed personally. I know not pausing helps sometimes but if you are being advised to not puase then why is there even a Pause Button ? Just my opinion and like I said I have used the software for many years and enjoy it but there are certain things like many others I would like to see updated or fixed too.

Thanks to Mike Spinks for posting this information back here and hopefully they will get this bug fixed sooner than later.

Just wanted to share my experience. I have been using version 8.*.* for 6 months and have now upgraded to version 9.

In both versions I have just recorded the screen, no webcam involved. I have recorded my voice using an external microphone.

I'm doing education and tutorial videos for some rather technical stuff, so I use the pause/resume functionality quite often. There is NO DOUBT, that using pause/resume brings the sounds and the video out of sync. The more I use it the more it get's out of sync. I spend - maybe not hours - but 10s of minutes moving sound to match video. I have had to introduce a protocol of click "hard" with the mouse as the first thing after I resume the recording to have a fix point between the video and the sound.

My frustration is growing, and when I see that this has been an unsolved problem for more than 5 years, and the answer from the engineers is: "Well we don't see it much, and only on certain occasions, and maybe you shouldn't use a STANDARD feature like pause/resume" then I'm loosing trust in the product.

I agree with everything you said. That's exactly what happens to me. It's really absurd at this point that they haven't fixed it yet. And the fact that support just tells you "well then just don't use pause" is even more absurd.

Recording software that can't keep audio/video in sync...??? Derrr...herp...derp.
Camtasia is a total joke if it can't do something that basic.

I too have purchased Camtasia 9 thinking I can use it as a video editor for non-Camtasia files. The files play fine in a normal player but when played or produced with Camtasia, the audio is fine but the video doesn't keep up. I have to move the playhead backwards to see where the video is.

To fix, I had to recode the video in Handbrake (#4 in the link below) for it to work for me.

I made a similar observation so TechSmith asked me for a video example. I made a video of a metronome ticking away for a whole hour. After about 15 minutes the audio and video were visibly out of sync. After a half hour, the "tick" was happening when the metronome pointer was straight up rather than the side. By the end of a full hour, the "tick" was happening on the completely opposite side. Anyone could see the video lagged horribly. I never even paused the recording.Their reply was that it wasn't a good example of a real world video and I should make another one with people talking. Really? How would the result be any different?

Yes, in the REAL world a metronome would never tick for a full hour. Only people talking would really happen. Why people talk for a full hour just about every day. Although, obviously, you could fake that and have people who don't NORMALLY talk to each other talk for a full hour, and then it wouldn't be a real world example either.

This is why I stopped using Camtasia. This problem has been ruining my work for years. (version 7 and 8). Thanks for letting me know its still broken in 9! i use other stuff now, my computer is TOP of the line so it cant be me.

I recorded a great video with a Mevo camera and audio from a sound board. It's an excellent video. I load it into Camtasia and it becomes useless. As soon as I produce any portion the audio/video get's out of synch.

I am using a HP workstation with dual xeon CPUs, 48 GB ram & a 500 GB SSD & a 4 GB graphics card. This is not a hardware issue.

I am finally giving up on Camtasia and going to start editing in Adobe. The "simplicity" that Camtasia used to afford is now totally worthless given that, as others have pointed out, the minimal basic function of an editing software needs to include producing files with audio/video synchronization.

basically, Camtasia has been a tool for creating, editing, and producing high quality screen captured projects, and it does a great job; it is also slowly evolving so as to do real video editing/production; if you are currently focused on working with camera footage, etc., you might be better off with other video editing tools

that said, you might try slicing and dicing your original media into multiple short segments, and using the Library to manage the multiple projects for editing and eventual recombining into a single, very large, composite project ...

Kayakman...then they should NOT BE ADVERTISING IT AS a real video editing package.

I am just doing simple, non-complex editing. I have a video capture card to handle the heavy lifting (because Camtasia is given to crashing while recording the screen [experienced this on three different PCs]) but I loved the editing interface.

If it can't handle it, stop advertising it as a video editing solution.

SOLVED with the latest update from TechSmith.....seems there was a software issue. All I did was update to the latest version 9.04 from April 11, 2017 and then restart my computer, open my project, hit share and viola the audio/video synch issue on my produced files has been solved.

Also of note, the encoding/render time was reduced significantly, or I should say, "returned to what I normally expect from this machine".

NO IT IS NOT FIXED. I have the fully updated Camtasia 9.1 and I am experiencing this problem. This is ridiculous. I spent the $100 to upgrade to version 9 from version 8 after it was advertised as a serious code revamp. And now these issues have gone from a rare occurrence in version 8 to a CONSTANT occurrence in version 9.

My gods this is infuriating. The FIRST TIME I hit pause my mp3 track will start playing again from the beginning, even though the video and audio tracks are obviously several minutes ahead on the timeline display.

Let me explain this in the modern world of social media. Camtasia addresses the problem THAT HAS EXISTED FOR SEVERAL YEARS or the frustrated, angry, and cheated users are going to start a concerted campaign to warn people away from purchasing this product.

Some of us has thousands or tens of thousands of followers on social media that respect our opinion on technical issues. We are tired of this. Address it or you will meet the social maxim that states a disappointed customer will complain to 9 people about a product. A satisfied customer will compliment a product to only one.

LET MAKE THIS CLEAR. When editing a video file along with a separate audio track, if the user dares to ever press the PAUSE button, the timeline will appear to pause and wait. When the play button is pushed again, the timeline display will proceed as normal, but the audio output will desync from what is displayed.

I am already working on that. Perhaps Techsmith should be honest and pull the ability to import MP3s. I have tried standard and variable MP3s. I have tried all different levels of quality export on MP3s.

If they can't handle it, pull it from the specs.

Please, point out to me where this is a KNOW ISSUE in the advertising and I will apologize for being frustrated because I didn't read it thoroughly.

I can understand the frustration regarding audio and as kayakman mentioned, the best format to use with Camtasia is WAV (16-bit WAV at 44.1 kHz). We do have a couple public articles referring to the best formats to use and you can find them here and here.

Given the issues that you're experiencing I would also recommend that, if you haven't already, you open a support ticket, as they may be able to help address any additional issues you are running into.